SocraticGadfly: Obama, #DACA and #hypocrisy shattered Dreamers

September 06, 2017

Obama, #DACA and #hypocrisy shattered Dreamers

Yeah, I saw Obama call out Trump yesterday on wanting to end DACA.

But, how many of you knew that Obama deported more people than any other president? That he deported more than all 20th-century presidents combined?

Snopes tries to get Obama off the hook by saying this was in part due to a change in definition. It then undercuts itself by admitting this happened under Bush, but doesn't say exactly when, or what his stats were. This is one of those clear cases where Snopes, moving from narrow skepticism fact-checking to political analysis, fails. (Obama passed Bush by 750,000.)

And, if part of it was due to other legislative changes, Snopes, did Obama try to veto any of it? This is the man who kept the "Bush tax cuts" in place, after all.

Otherwise, quick Googling of the mainstream media shows poor data there on the main stories trying to compare Obama and Bush.

I am going to make what is, I think, a reasonable assumption, that the change in numbers of full, fingerprinted deportations vs turnarounds, and any definitional changes, started not too long after 9/11, and therefore, covered most of Shrub's presidenncy.

Therefore, at a minimum, with apples to apples for most of their presidencies, suffice it to say that Obama was at least as bad as Bush, I am very sure, and still probably worse. (If I generously say the two administrations were 80 percent apples-to-apples, Obama still deports 200,000 more.)

So why the sudden concern for DACA and the Dreamers?

Guilty conscience?

I doubt it.

Legacy?

Maybe.

He should be guilty for abandoning state and Congressional Dems in 2010. But, I'm not a Dem.

Anyway, I think that Obama created DACA by executive order precisely to let him get away with deporting more adults, at least as one part of the idea behind that.

You read that right.

Hence my header.

But why?

To appear tough on crime? But, he didn't make that part of his re-election platform.

So, ultimately, I don't know.

I just know he comes off as a hypocrite on this issue.

And, sure, he was facing the tail end of a Shrub Bush spike in illegal immigration, but it declined, modestly, under his own administration. Per that Pew link, more of them were long-term residents in the US, 10 or more years, especially from Mexico, which makes their deportation even worse.

Plus, more and more were from south of Mexico, escaping places like chronically right-wing wracked Guatemala, or the Honduras of the Obama-Clinton coup of 2009. (I originally called it a non-coup, then a semi-coup, then a coup, per Wiki.)

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